Chapter 5
FIVE
CORD
Chasing the Sun
Flirting with Lanie is like riding a rollercoaster: one moment I’m gliding high on the thought of a date with the girl I’ve been crushing on for days, and then next, I’m in freefall at the thought of letting her into my world.
I’ve cloistered myself away like a fucking nun for so long that I’ve forgotten how to socialize beyond business and the Invitational.
Maybe we’re a match in that. She’s a nomadic scientist; I’m a reclusive rancher. We’re both so used to keeping our distance from our own kind that we’ve forgotten what being around others outside our immediate stratosphere is supposed to look like.
West will tell me to watch my pocketbook, but I’d rather watch the way her ass sways in denim that looks painted on. Or how her hair curls around her body in wild waves that I want to wrap around my hands.
Lanie Parker is the new addiction I can’t afford, and I’m not used to looking outside my price range.
By the time I arrive at the produce store on the other side of town, Dallas stands at the rear of the yard with his arms folded over his chest. The stub of a cigarette dangles from his lips when I pull up.
He spits it out, stepping over the still-wafting smoke with his hands held face up and spread wide at hip level.
“What time do you call this, asshole?”
“I pay you. Aren’t you supposed to bend over, or kiss my ass?” I grin harder as his habitual scowl deepens.
“I’ll show you how to bend over,” he grumbles.
I smirk. “I’m sure you can. Have you got what I ordered?”
“If you knew you were gonna be this late, why didn’t you send someone else out to collect your shit? You’ve got an army of little minions who can run around after you.” He waves at the empty space around me, sans minions. “You know you don’t have to do everything yourself.”
“And you know me better than that,” I snap, running a hand over my short hair. Apparently with Lanie in my head, I’ve lost track of everything else in my life, including my sense of time. “Sorry, Dallas. Being on time is a thing with me.”
Dallas stares at me as though he hasn’t been a critical part of my life for the last fifteen years. “I know, man. Just giving you shit. C’mon.”
He leads me behind his workshop, where a stack of metal is laid out on the ground in a neat pile.
I count the gates and star pickets, relieved.
We have more than enough to set up the chute and the yard for the pending event.
Not that I should have ever been worried.
Dallas has helped me organize the Valiant Peak Invitational since its inception.
Hell, he’s been around since I first bought Coyote Falls back in my early twenties.
He also knows I rarely accept help.
“I thought you had all this from previous years’ events,” he grunts, hefting the first rail. “You wanna bring your truck around and load it all in?”
“Who the fuck knows. I lost some. Maybe ours got shipped out with the rest of the stage gear.” Dust swirls in tiny eddies around us, the chaotic patterns matching the mess in my mind.
“Yeah, or someone swiped it and thought you wouldn’t notice. Or care.”
I press my lips together. “West did suggest that,” I acknowledge, turning my back on my friend. The thought that one of my regular boys stole from me sits poorly, and West knows it. Dallas, too, from his tone, though he knows better than to push me on the subject.
“Rich boy still hanging about your place?” Dallas asks my back, pulling me out of my head.
“Jed? Yeah. Maybe he wants to see what the competition does. He is my neighbor, after all.”
“With his own damn ranch to manage. He doesn’t need to be hanging around yours.”
What Dallas says makes sense, but without being an asshole I can’t shove Jed off my land whenever he wanders over the boundary line between our properties. Courtesy dictates otherwise. Seeing that we share over fifty square miles of fence line, I try to keep the peace.
I move my truck, pulling the parking brake up with more force than required. I have to admit that when both of my closest friends suggest the same thing, they’re probably right. Even I know in my gut that losing parts of the rodeo setup isn’t an oversight on my part, or West’s.
My head ignores the obvious and dives straight back to Lanie, blocking out everything else outside my comfort zone right now.
I can face that uncomfortable truth later.
I doubt money makes that much of a difference to her from what I’ve gathered of her unusual lifestyle, rather like my sister.
I can see her fitting in well with the remnants of my odd found family. My safety net.
Slow down, Rand. She hasn’t agreed to be part of your world yet.
Lanie hasn’t seen enough to make that choice.
She’s not the only one who lives in a strange life of her own making.
A few stolen moments are all we have to build on so far, though I already know I have every intention of drawing her into my world and bargaining with the tattered, dust-trodden remnants of my soul.
Dallas secures everything, still grumbling under his breath about ungrateful assholes with too much free time and not enough sense.
“Are you going to help me set up?” I ask casually.
He fixes me with a hard glare. “If you’re that scared to come off your damned hobby farm and deal with real people, Rand, you should probably stay there ’til you harden the hell up.”
I smother a grin, flexing my forearms on the truck bed. “You’ll be there, then?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Good man.” I swing myself into the cab of my truck, grinning like a mad man.
At least I’ve got someone in my corner for this round.
By the time I pull into Coyote Falls’ drive, my playlist has reached its limits.
Randy Houser’s “How Country Feels” takes me as far as the homestead, where West perches on the fence by the barn.
Snowy peaks rise above the large, red building like a painted backdrop.
My foreman’s beaten hat shadows his weathered face.
Like the rest of the men in the yard at the end of a long day, West lives in his oldest dusty jeans and scuffed leather work boots.
Dirty denim is the unofficial uniform of Coyote Falls.
A long-sleeved, blue-and-white-checked shirt strains across his barrel chest, his strength making him the perfect work partner.
The man possesses more stamina than I’ll ever have, but we’re a match in terms of pure determination and stubbornness.
Maybe a touch of asshole factor on the right occasion.
“Have you been lazing around the whole time I was gone?” I yell, yanking at the straps holding the fence posts on the truck bed. Dallas did too good a job on his side. “We’ll be lucky if I don’t have to cut these free.”
“Yep. Sitting here, doing nothing all day, lookin’ sexy as hell.” West throws me a grin, hopping down to attack the other side of the load.
One strap finally comes free in my hands. I fling the loose end over the top at him. “My western pinup boy.”
He unloops his end of the strap and throws it back at me. “You took a while. I had to look good in case you brought all the pretty ladies home.”
“When does that ever happen?” I raise an eyebrow, not looking at him in case he reads the hidden truth written in my guilty face.
“The ass end of never. We’re gonna lose the light.” He pauses for a moment, a speculative glint in his gray eyes.
“Are you getting old, ready to clock out when it gets dark?” I grunt, tackling the last strap, and keep my chin tucked.
“Clock out when? You never stop, man. Gotta keep up with you.” West beats me to it, the top rail sliding precariously to the edge of the six-wheeler’s bed.
“I got it.” I strain beneath the largest gate but manage to tilt it to the ground without sustaining damage to either myself or the truck. Flirting with Lanie was fun, but working with my hands is a simple pleasure I’ve been denied once and never will be again.
Despite his bitching, West helps with the rest of the load as dusk settles over Coyote Falls.
I love how the light shifts at this time of day, covering the homestead in a blanket of purple haze that obliterates the razorbacks.
The boys filter back toward the bunkhouse, tired and filthy, if satisfied with a day’s hard work.
Levi, Coyote’s chef, will feed them shortly, whining about wasted talents while filling the bellies of men who deserve the best for their efforts.
As I’m finishing up, my unwelcome but constantly present neighbor, Jed, hangs over a fence nearest the bunkhouse, chatting away with several of my younger hands who still have energy to spare. His shiny truck is parked beside Billy’s battered one.
I frown at the interaction, torn between stalking into the homestead or throwing Jed back over his side of the fence.
His house is a damn long way from mine by design.
Jury’s out on the man’s intentions, but Jed’s morals and mine diverge fairly fast and broad.
Where I choose to work alongside the men who kick up dust at Coyote Falls, Jed’s growing paunch and pale skin tell their own tale.
I don’t know if the man wants to steal my boys or wreak havoc on my hard-earned peace, but more than one despondent, broke cowboy has turned up on my doorstep with horror stories of how the overfed rancher mistreats his workers.
“Haven’t you got your own mouths to feed?” I call over my shoulder, my voice loud enough to silence the conversation in the yard.
Scuffling feet tell me my comment was on point, at least on my side of the fence. Boots too heavy to belong in my yard clatter closer as I glance across at West.
“Subtle, Rand.” West shakes his head. He grabs a roll of wire that doesn’t need to be moved and walks away, presenting me with his back, though he doesn’t stop muttering under his breath. “Real fuckin’ subtle.”
“You got some good boys working here this season.” Jed strikes up a conversation with the shoulder still turned to him.
I glare at West’s back, hating my life choices right now.
“Yeah, they’re a good lot,” I acknowledge, wishing I’d kept my damn mouth shut.
But since I have my neighbor as a captive audience…
“Have you thought any more about that parcel of land we talked about? The one you aren’t using down on the western boundary. ”
Jed huffs a laugh. “You can take the businessman out of the city, but you can’t take the city out of the businessman, huh? Do you ever stop, Rand?”
West had asked me the same thing the week before, so I have my answer ready.
“When I’m dead.”
I face Jed with the sort of smile that doesn’t reach my eyes. His sort of smile, because no emotion passes across his face as he considers me. Mostly because I’m not of use to him in this moment.
“Not right now,” he says softly, spinning his oversized white hat on one finger as he answers my earlier question out of turn.
I nod. “Good to know. I need to feed my boys. Nice seeing you, Jed.” The disjointed conversation and his predatory tone leave me slightly sickened.
But fighting with my neighbor over hanging out in my yard won’t achieve the retreat from society I crave, not with the chance of a burgeoning fresh start with Lanie come tomorrow.
Finally, Jed gets the hint and walks away, humming a tune I don’t recognize horrifically off-key.
My eyes strain in the dim light as I turn my mind back to the task at hand.
I find a gap big enough to store the gates inside the barn against the far wall.
“There,” I mutter to myself, but West slides out of the shadows, ready to work the moment we’re alone in the yard.
We stow the kit I brought back from town, and West locks up. “Told you we’d lose the light.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I check the yard, but it’s emptied out. An old doubt creeps in with the failing light. “Am I pushing too hard?”
You, me? Everyone?
West crosses his arms that bulge with a bulk that my naturally leaner frame will never achieve. “We doin’ a big deep and motherfuckin’ meaningful right now? ’Cause I need food and beer before we get into that shit.”
A huff escapes me. “Nah. We’re good.” I rap the side of the barn with my fist, wondering when I’ll finally be comfortable in my own skin, on my own dirt, standing beside the man who has supported me at my lowest point even when everyone else walked away.
Even when I couldn’t.
“Let’s eat.”